London’s Monzo CEO To Forgo Salary As Workers Face Furlough

The 34-year-old top executive of digital bank Monzo will give up his salary for a year, while senior staffers take a 25 percent pay cut.

In a memo leaked to TechCrunch on Tuesday (March 31), Co-founder and CEO Thomas Blomfield told the company’s 1,500 employees that he would not be taking a salary for a year. The announcement comes as the London-based lender responds to the downturn in the economy caused by the coronavirus.

The CEO’s salary wasn’t immediately clear, but a Monzo spokesman told London’s The Telegraph that Blomfield made $99,744 in 2018. The company’s highest-paid director earned $379,219 that year in wages and share-based pay, according to the report. A company spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The timing of Blomfield’s decision to relinquish his pay comes as he has offered a number of its U.K. employees to take a voluntary two-month furlough under a government initiative to protect jobs, the report said.

Last month, Monzo vowed to hire as many as 500 workers in an effort to reach 5.5 million users in 2020, despite complaints from users who said they had been locked out of their accounts for no reason. 

There was also an attempted rollout of a premium paid-for account last September, which was canceled after just a few months. The bank is also preparing to try charging customers again to turn a profit.

Since launching in 2015, Monzo has burned through cash in its attempt to grow and launch in the U.S. However, it has had no problem raising capital, and is valued at more than $2.6 billion. To date, Monzo has 3.8 million customers in its British home base. Younger customers have become particularly enamored, and a YouGov survey from last November had Monzo as the most likely brand in Britain to recommend to a friend.